New Second Life viewer offers easier navigation, in-world media

Second Life released a new version of its viewer today, Second Life Viewer 2 Beta, offering easier navigation and additional functionality. The biggest single improvement is the ability to see media on in-world surfaces — not just a single QuickTime video per region, but Flash and even live Web pages.

The viewer also rearranges the view screen, putting browser-style back and home buttons, a location bar, and a search field at the top of the screen.

Virtual worlds blogger Dusan Writer said that the viewer is the beginning of a series of steps that “that promise to radically transform the virtual world, its culture, its ability to integrate with the wider digital landscape, and its ability to attract new users.”

Users have also already posted videos showing off some of the features of the new viewer, including the one below, demonstrating the ability to share media.

“The whole strategy is to break down the walls to make Second Life much more accessible to users and make it possible for all this incredibly rich content to travel outward—to travel to the web and be shared,” said Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdom told technology evangelist Robert Scoble.

But nto all reactions were completely positive. Some users reported frequent crashes, or problems getting used to thte new interface. In addition, the new viewer’s functionality is not yet supported by OpenSim.

Maria Korolov is editor and publisher of Hypergrid Business. She has been a journalist for more than twenty years and has worked for the Chicago Tribune, Reuters, and Computerworld and has reported from over a dozen countries, including Russia and China. Follow me on Twitter @MariaKorolov.